iPhone line-sitting has never been a proud endeavor, but at least there was something pure about the diehards and wackos that set up shop outside Apple Stores for days, even weeks ahead of launch. This year? It's just a bunch of sellouts and self-promoters.

The first two people, Fortune reports, in line outside of Apple's flagship Fifth Avenue cube are there to promote a social media start up. The next two are being sponsored by a service that buys old electronics (like, say, your iPhone 4S), and one of them is, naturally blogging about it. The fifth intends to sell his spot to the highest bidder, and the last two are aspiring musicians hoping to get their names out there.

Again, there's no such thing as the sanctity of line-sitting. It's always been a strange pursuit, especially since the advent of the online preorder. But at least there was something sociologically interesting when a mass of people deprived themselves so much for so long because their devotion to a hunk of metal (or glass) was so strong. This? This is just a marketing symbiote. Apple gets hype because people are in line, line-sitters get hype because they're... there. And the worst part is, it's going to work. It already has.